Joyce's Book of Memory: The Mnemotechnic of UlyssesDuke University Press, 1999 M01 6 - 240 pages For James Joyce, perhaps the most crucial of all human faculties was memory. It represented both the central thread of identity and a looking glass into the past. It served as an avenue into other minds, an essential part of the process of literary composition and narration, and the connective tissue of cultural tradition. In Joyce’s Book of Memory John S. Rickard demonstrates how Joyce’s body of work—Ulysses in particular—operates as a “mnemotechnic,” a technique for preserving and remembering personal, social, and cultural pasts. Offering a detailed reading of Joyce and his methods of writing, Rickard investigates the uses of memory in Ulysses and analyzes its role in the formation of personal identity. The importance of forgetting and repression, and the deadliness of nostalgia and habit in Joyce’s paralyzed Dublin are also revealed. Noting the power of spontaneous, involuntary recollection, Rickard locates Joyce’s mnemotechnic within its historical and philosophical contexts. As he examines how Joyce responded to competing intellectual paradigms, Rickard explores Ulysses’ connection to medieval, modern, and (what would become) postmodern worldviews, as well as its display of tensions between notions of subjective and universal memory. Finally, Joyce’s Book of Memory illustrates how Joyce distilled subjectivity, history, and cultural identity into a text that offers a panoramic view of the modern period. This book will interest students and scholars of Joyce, as well as others engaged in the study of modern and postmodern literature. |
From inside the book
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Page 5
... force of the narrative for a surprisingly diverse community of readers " ( 23 ) . Herr provides a useful framework ... forces , those hidden tides which govern everything and run humanity counter to the apparent flood : those poisonous ...
... force of the narrative for a surprisingly diverse community of readers " ( 23 ) . Herr provides a useful framework ... forces , those hidden tides which govern everything and run humanity counter to the apparent flood : those poisonous ...
Page 7
... forces or grids that provide the available subject positions within a given culture . Contemporary theo- ries of the subject in the humanities and social sciences stress culture and experience over nature and inheritance to the point ...
... forces or grids that provide the available subject positions within a given culture . Contemporary theo- ries of the subject in the humanities and social sciences stress culture and experience over nature and inheritance to the point ...
Page 11
... forces that move the reader and the plot toward the resolution of desire and forces that delay or defer the reader's or character's arrival at or attainment of that goal . According to Brooks , plot itself involves a tension between forces ...
... forces that move the reader and the plot toward the resolution of desire and forces that delay or defer the reader's or character's arrival at or attainment of that goal . According to Brooks , plot itself involves a tension between forces ...
Page 12
... forces outside the character or subject deploy memory in order to break through the impasse of the present moment and ... force in Ulysses . Gérard Genette has best defined the use of prolepsis for narratology in Narrative Discourse : An ...
... forces outside the character or subject deploy memory in order to break through the impasse of the present moment and ... force in Ulysses . Gérard Genette has best defined the use of prolepsis for narratology in Narrative Discourse : An ...
Page 13
... force of memory is very much an active force in the text . If , as Brooks claims , " Desire is always there at the start of the narra- tive , " what desires announce themselves in need of fulfillment in Ulys- ses ? And to what extent ...
... force of memory is very much an active force in the text . If , as Brooks claims , " Desire is always there at the start of the narra- tive , " what desires announce themselves in need of fulfillment in Ulys- ses ? And to what extent ...
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Common terms and phrases
allusion argues Artist associations become Bergson Bloom and Stephen Bruno's Budgen chance characters Circe claims consciousness Creative Evolution cultural unconscious dead destiny Dignam's Dublin echoes élan vital eleven Ellmann entelechy essay example experience father Finnegans Wake force Freud Gerty ghost Golden Ass guilt habit Hamlet Herr human ideas identity images imagination intertextual involuntary memory Ithaca James Joyce Joyce's texts Joyce's Ulysses Joyce's writing Leopold Bloom Lestrygonians magic Maher's memory in Ulysses metempsychosis models of mind modern modernist Molly mother mourning narrative nature Nausicaa nostalgia notes notion novel Nymph Odyssey paralyzed past Portrait present Proust provides Psyche psychic reader reading recollection remember repressed Richard Ellmann Rudy Rudy's death sense sexual Shakespeare shared memories soul Stephen and Bloom Stephen Dedalus Stephen's riddle suggests symbols tension text of Ulysses textual memory theory Theosophical thinks thoughts tion traditional Trieste Ulysses University Press voluntary Wandering Rocks words